“I too discovered the Mahi Mahi and it is really yummy.  I bread them in some egg and ground nuts – I especially like a mix of fine ground almonds with some fine coconut.  Cook them with fresh lemon juice.  I cook them in a small amount of Coconut OIl (virgin, organic of course).  And… I love baked sweet potatoes.”
Lotte

Asian Turkey Burgers

1 pound ground turkey
1 small red bell pepper chopped
¼ small head Napa (or regular) cabbage, shredded
3 scallions finely chopped
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
2 Tablespoons basil finely chopped (or mint or cilantro)
4 teaspoons Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
2 teaspoons finely grated ginger root
½ teaspoon sesame oil
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon finely ground black pepper
2 Tablespoons olive oil
6 whole grain hamburger buns (gluten sensitive folks – use rice bread)

Mix together ground turkey, bell pepper, cabbage, scallions, egg white, herb, 2 Tablespoons Bragg Liquid Aminos, ginger, sesame oil, salt and pepper. Shape into 4 patties, about ½ inch thick.

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over high heat until hot. Reduce heat to medium, add burger patties. Cook 5 minutes on each side or until cooked through. Add more oil as needed.

If you would like to spice these burgers up a bit, mix these ingredients to make a spread:
¼ cup mayonnaise (I use the Follow Your Heart grape seed mayo)
1 ½ teaspoons prepared wasabi
¾ teaspoon Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
½ teaspoon sesame oil

Place burgers in a bun and spread with the mayo-wasabi sauce. Or just use mayo if you don’t like wasabi.

Happy eating.

Blessings,
Dr. Jo

While shopping at a local warehouse store (Costco) I decided to try a package of their frozen mahi mahi and it was delicious, so moist and tender and none of that fishy taste that develops when fish has sat around for a day or two.

Here’s my favorite way to fix any white fish:

                Cut a lemon in half

                Chop up the green part of a couple of green onions     

Heat a little butter in a skillet and add the fish as soon as the butter sizzles when putting the fish in the pan, but don’t burn the butter. Squeeze some lemon juice over the fish. Then sprinkle it with the chopped green onions. Turn the fish after about 2-3 minutes depending on the thickness of the piece. Keep the fire hot enough to keep the juices from running out of the fish, usually about a medium heat.

For me the perfect doneness occurs when the fish has just turned opaque all the way through but is still moist and tender. M-m-m good. Give this healthy recipe a try in your kitchen.

Before starting the fish the sweet potatoes went in the oven to bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. I place them in a Corning ware dish with a little water in the bottom and then cover them with the lid before popping them in the oven. If you don’t like sweet potatoes, you can bake white, red or purple potatoes the same way.

Never tried purple potatoes? Give them a try. They’re fun for a change.

While the potatoes are cooking and before starting the fish, put together a nice green salad with lots of different colored raw vegetables.

Now I’ll have to tell you about our crazy Brussels sprouts that we had with that meal. This was my first experience in growing Brussels sprouts in our garden. I had to baby those plants so much. Just getting the little sprouts started in the ground took a lot of tender care in itself. Then the grasshoppers decided that they were delicious, so I painstakingly covered them with cheesecloth.

By the end of fall we still had no Brussels sprouts forming on the stalks but the plants were about 18 inches high and healthy. Then they survived that 2 feet of snow that turned to ice for a month.

Finally some tiny “little cabbages” formed on the stalks but they seemed too small to harvest, so I left them a while longer. Then next time I went out to the garden those “little cabbages” had all unfurled into leaves.

 Very interesting. Now I had hairy Brussels sprouts.

After all of that work to grow this plant, we were going to eat something from it. So I stripped the unfurled leaves off the stalks, washed them good, them steamed them for about 5 minutes. They were delicious.

So now we have discovered a new gourmet dish.

Blessings,

Dr. Jo

P.S. Does anyone have any tips for growing Brussels sprouts?  I think I may have waited too late to start them. It was about May when I put them in the ground as tiny seedlings.

Welcome to my kitchen,
Dr. Jo

I created these appetizers as part of the food demonstration that I did for doctors and nurses at a recent medical conference.

Dr. Jo

Dr. Jo’s Super Salmon Appetizers

1 can salmon (from Alaska – least polluted and not farmed – I found these at Costco), discard the liquid
2 Tablespoons olive or grape seed oil
1 ½ Tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ teaspoon dried dill or herbs of your choice

Mix all of above together. Then spoon a dollop on a cucumber round, slice of jicama, or stuff celery. Top with a cherry tomato, sprinkles of sesame seeds, shreds of carrots or anything else you can imagine.

Raw Yam Appetizers

Slice a raw orange yam into thin slices
Spread almond butter on each slice
Sprinkle with mixture of cinnamon and stevia extract (1 Tablespoon cinnamon with 1/8 teaspoon of stevia)
Top with sesame seeds, walnut, raw macadamia nuts, pumpkin seeds or hemp seeds.
Do the same thing with slices of jicama.

Stuffed Mini-peppers (sweet bell type – they come in packages of yellow, orange and red)
Cut the top off each mini-pepper at the stem.
Scoop out any seeds left inside.
Then get creative. I stuffed them with the Dr. Jo’s Super Salmon appetizer mixture. Then plugged the hole with a sweet 100 cherry tomato or stuck the pointy end of a yellow pear tomato into the salmon mixture. You may be surprised at how yummy these are
I stuffed another set with almond butter and then put a small tomato or other vegetable in the hole. These are very colorful and fun.

Everyone enjoyed the new taste treats. Most had not tried raw yam and did not even know of jicama.

Marinated Black Beans was another favorite served on jicama, cucumbers or suffed into mini-peppers or celery. You can find that recipe in Dr. Jo’s Natural Healing Cookbook.

Dr. Vince Fonseca, MD, MPH, Epidemiologist for the Texas Department of State Health Services described heart disease as narrowing and blockage of the arteries and stressed that it can affect almost all major arteries of the body. In his state, Texas, one third of all deaths are due to heart disease and stroke.

But here’s the good news. You can prevent or reverse heart disease by following Dr. Fonseca’s simple ABC approach:

• Avoid tobacco;
• Be more active and walk 30 minutes; and
• Choose healthier food, including more fiber, less saturated fat, and less salt.

Avoid tobacco – easier to never start than to stop. If you’re smoking now, look for help in stopping.

Be more active and walk 30 minutes, that’s easy to implement – just do it!

Choose healthier food. Now that may seem more complicated to you, depending on how you’re eating now, especially if you eat the Standard American Diet (SAD – so true). Have you tried a lot of the diets out there, low carb, low fat, low glycemic, avoid this, avoid that. Is it just too confusing and hard to follow?

Just forget all of that!

For over 20 years Dr. Jo (Bessie Jo Tillman, MD) worked with many patients diagnosed with heart disease and hardening of the arteries. They needed a simple, effective, tasty heart disease diet. So Dr. Jo spent many hours reviewing the nutrition research of pioneers in the field like Dr. Weston A Price, Dr. Pottenger, Dr. Page and Dr. Royal Lee among others. She discovered that certain food creates life and health in the body and other food creates disease and death for the body.

She began to incorporate the best eating plan available into her diet and began to teach these valuable, health- building but “secret” concepts to her patients. After several years of working with this food plan she developed Dr. Jo’s Natural Healing Cookbook to help her patients. They loved it, embraced it and many improved their health tremendously eating according to this brilliant food plan.

Now you can enjoy the wisdom and nurturing in Dr. Jo’s Natural Healing Cookbook.

Dr. Jo’s Natural Healing Cookbook offers you great recipes that your heart and your tongue will love. What’s more, Dr. Jo shows you how to develop a new way of thinking about food that makes switching to a healthy heart disease diet enjoyable and uplifting.

Actually she encourages you to think of eating in a way that serves your body well. She shows you which foods promote health and which foods are really “death foods”. Think of developing an eating plan that suits your uniquely-you metabolism. Forget about the diet idea if you’re thinking of it as a diet that you’ll do for awhile and then you’ll go back to those old ways of eating (i.e., “the death food plan”).

As a matter of fact you won’t even have to think about which foods you’ll have to avoid. Just eat the healthy food found in Dr. Jo’s Natural Healing Cookbook. It’s that easy. You won’t think of it as a heart disease diet anymore, but rather a delicious, nutritious, enjoyable eating plan that helps your uniquely-you body feel great. And you will love the healthy recipes.

Order Dr. Jo’s Natural Healing Cookbook right now. (Paperback version) It’s chock full of healthy recipes.

In a hurry? Get Dr. Jo’s Natural Healing Cookbook in the e-book version. Download it immediately!

Ours has been a most interesting adventure. Here’s a follow-up to the snow and ice saga at the Tillman mountain home. The snow started falling on December 14th. We left in almost white out conditions for the valley. My husband Pat went back home that day and didn’t get out for the rest of the week. Immediately after the snow fell we had 2 days of hard freezes and everything turned to ice. Pat had to spend 3 hours digging himself out of the snow and ice on our ¾ mile road just to get down to the valley for Christmas.

We wound up staying at each of our daughters’ homes for 10 days total and moved the family Christmas gathering to their houses since no one could get in to our place.

By January 1st, we thought maybe we could try going home. Sure enough we did – but had to walk in the ¾ mile because the road was still thick ice. Our 4-wheel drive pickup with studded mud and snow tires went slippery sliding. After Pat spent 5 days moving snow and ice with our tractor, we finally drove into our place (despite some icy patches) yesterday – January 11th – 4 weeks after the original snowfall that started all this. Yeah!  We’ve been riding our quad ATV up to the paved road to our truck the last 2 weeks. That’s a real waker-upper in the freezing morning hours.

But it’s all great adventure.

Yesterday I went down to the garden for the first time since the snowfall. It’s still pretty well covered in snow, but amazingly some plants seem to have survived this month of snow and ice. The cabbage and broccoli look lively and the volunteer snap peas look perky – unbelievable. Will be interesting to see if any of that produce ever matures.

Click here to get your gift.

Please post comments after you read the story. I value your thoughts.

Merry Christmas 2008,

Dr. Jo

So here’s my Christmas gift to you, tips on staying healthy and having a really great time enjoying the people in your life (even the ones you don’t look forward to being with).

 Simplify, decrease the busy-ness of the season:

   Keep gift giving simple – it’s the love that counts.

   Does decorating stress you? Just put out the large decorations. They do more to create the Christmas atmosphere than all those little items that take so much time.

   No time for that time eating task of wrapping packages – use decorative Christmas bags and then save them to use again next year if they get left at your house.

   Make Christmas dinner a potluck.

   It’s the love that counts.

 Hug a lot, even the unloveables. You may be surprised at the love that returns to you.

 Laugh a lot:

   Even when the power goes out and you have 13 people staying in your home, snowed in with you.

   Hug a lot – it will keep you warm when the heating source is defunct because the power is out.

   Enjoy the fun of having to live by candle light. After all candle light is romantic.

   It’s the love that counts.

 Protect yourself from those germs:

(These recommendations should not be taken by pregnant women or young children.)

   Take extra Vitamin D if you live where you can’t get good sun exposure in the winter months. Just about all adults can take 2,000 IU per day. If you’re around an infected person, take an extra 2,000 to 4,000 IU per day for a few days.

   If you start to come down with a virus, take 100,000 to 300,000 IU of vitamin A per day and 400 to 800 IU of vitamin E per day for only 3 days. If you have liver disease, do not take these high doses of vitamin A.

   Some people find that taking extra Vitamin C helps protect them from germs. If your body deals with synthetic Vitamin C well, gradually increase the amount you take to bowel tolerance. That means stay at the highest dose you can take before it causes diarrhea.

   Love a lot – germs hate that.

 Remember to love a lot – that’s what this season is all about. It’s a celebration of the day that God’s great love took on human form and walked the earth so we can always stay in God’s abundant love. Love is spelled Jesus.

God bless you. Have a wonderful Christmas.

Much Love,

Dr. Jo

Cashew Butter Carob Chip No-Bakers

¼ cup flax oil
¾ cup cashew butter
¼ teaspoon stevia extract white powder
½ cup unsweetened frozen concentrated apple juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup unsweetened or malt sweetened dairy-free carob chips
4 Tablespoons ground flaxseeds
1 cup rice or millet or quinoa flour or 1-2 cups rolled oats or rye flakes

Mix the oil and cashew butter together.  Mix the stevia into the carob powder.  Then, mix all the rest of the ingredients together in the order given.  The amount of flour or oat or rye flakes you use will depend partly on your oil, so don’t add it all at once, just add it a little bit at a time until you get it to the consistency you want. 
 Roll into 1 Tablespoon-sized balls.  Serve these cookies as the rolled balls, or flatten them if you like more of a cookie shape.  To keep the mixture from sticking to your hands, put a little olive oil out on a saucer and then dip your hands and your spoon you are using in the oil.  That makes it a lot easier to roll the balls.

Blessings,
Dr. Jo

P. S. Remember – only 8 shopping days until Christmas. Finish your shopping the easy way by ordering the gift of health. Review this special offer here.